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Just because we’re all trying to stay warm right now doesn’t mean that some techies aren’t thinking about cold – or at least cool. From climate-friendly freezers to arguments for space heating, we’ve got what’s cool – and what’s cold.

An affordable Earthship: I’ve been in love with the Earthship building concept for years, but no way I’d ever be able to afford one. That may be changing, though: the “Simple Survival” model Earthship is designed to provide the amenities of these self-sufficient structures without the “mortgage bondage.” Check it out above.

Assembly lines rolling out the Focus Electric: Think Nissan’s the only game in town for a true electric vehicle? Not anymore: Ford’s started production of its 2012 Focus Electric in Michigan. (via @edbegleyjr)

Ranger Rick comes to the iPhone: Your kids bug you to play games on your smartphone? The National Wildlife Federation has created a way to make sure they’re learning something. The new Ranger Rick mobile apps provide games for kids as young as 2 (yes, 2!) to sharpen their knowledge about wild animals.

Google Music: Yesterday, Google launched its first music sharing and downloading platform, “Google Music,” as a direct competitor to iTunes. Yes, you have to buy the songs (drag), but users can share whatever they purchase with friends for one free listen…

MIT grad student Joe McMichael created Globe Genie, a fun chat roulette-like experience, but instead of randomly connecting you with a stranger (or, as if often the case, their penis), it instantly transports you to a random corner of the world (or at least the random corners that have been visited by the Google Maps Street View camera). As The New York Times writes, with a press of the “teleport” button “this could be a stretch of highway in rural Denmark, a corner in downtown Denver or the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro” (and no surprise penises!). I think the usage of the word teleport is fitting…

Pig poop, coconuts, and seaweed: all the stuff of good green tech finds this week.

An affordable, fast and tip-proof electric motorcycle: Lit Motors CEO Daniel Kim claims all of those qualities come together in the C-1 concept, which could be available as early as 2013. Check it out in the video above. (via GreenTech Pastures)

Solar and wind power for apartment dwellers: Jonathan Globerson’s Greenerator concept allows apartment dwellers to harvest both wind and solar power from their balconies. (via Inhabitat)

GM recycling oil booms into Volt parts: Lots of oil booms left over from last year’s BP oil spill. Instead of letting them get tossed into landfills, GM is collecting these materials and recycling them into air-deflecting baffles for the Chevy Volt. (via Earth 911)

Off-grid in the Big Apple, and geothermal energy capture that doesn’t cause earthquakes… your green tech finds for the week.

The recycling robot: Finnish start-up ZenRobotics claims its ZenRobotics Recycler, a robot designed to sort recyclables from other waste, has correctly identified half the materials presented to it in tests. See the “trailer” for the robot above. (via Good News from Finland)

A field guide for tree species… on your phone: The new Leafsnap app allows you to identify species of trees simply by taking a picture of a leaf. Users can also share images and locations, making for potentially useful data on tree species. (via Grist and The Guardian)
Car parts made from dandelions: The “milky-white substance that seeps from dandelion roots” may work as a sustainable source of “rubber” for car parts such as cup holders and floor mats. Ford and The Ohio State University are experimenting…

For your today’s procrastination, check out Back of a Webpage: an independent project from the creative minds of Jeff Lam and Josephine Yatar, it’s an amusing and clever look some popular websites such as Facebook, Google, and Flickr (above). Lets get one for SUNfiltered up there! [Via]

A new green smart phone, water from diesel, and the dirtiness of your data… your Earth Week green tech finds.

Recyclemania at Dell: The Austin, TX-based computer and electronics maker announced it recycled more than 150 million pounds of e-waste in 2010. (via GreenTech Pastures)
Google, Department of Energy mapping EV charging stations: The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory is working with Google to map electric vehicle charging stations, along with other alternative vehicle fuels. (via Earth Techling)

Lots of solar this week… plus an app for Earth Hour, and lighter footprints for U.S. embassies.

Water, water everywhere: It’s World Water Week, and this cool new interactive map and tool allows you to explore water supplies and consumption by country, and to see the embodied water in a wide range of products. (via @togethergreen)

We’re totally hooked on Google’s new book search tool, which lets you search and graph the frequency of words in millions of books from 1800 to today. You can even compare and contrast two words or phrases to see how they fare in print over the years. It’s intended for scholars, but it’s free for anyone to use. “We wanted to show what becomes possible when you apply very high-turbo data analysis to questions in the humanities,” said one of the geniuses behind the toy — er, tool. He calls the method “culturomics” — which is a hell of a lot catchier than the tool’s title: the Books Ngram Viewer (gotta love the nerd factor). We took the tool for a test drive…

This YouTube video from Google takes a look back at this year and “based on the aggregation of billions of search queries people typed into Google this year…captures the spirit of 2010.” And of course the spirit stick of 2010 will be waved by Antoine Dodson who will beat any bed intruder with said spirit…

I’m a big fan of artist Jon Rafman’s one part detective and one part curatorial digital project, 9 Eyes. He scours Google’s Street View and other blogs to find and compile compelling snapshots of what he writes “captures what Cartier-Bresson titled “the decisive moment,” as if I were a photojournalist responding instantaneously to an emerging…

A solar-powered motorcycle, a geothermal motherlode in West Virginia, and Abraham Lincoln meets clean energy… your green tech finds for the week.

The solar-powered Suzuki: Purdue University physics major Tony Danger Coiro has received a provisional patent for the ’78 Suzuki motorcycle he converted into a solar-powered vehicle. Check it out in the video above… (via Cleantechies)

More Google renewable investments: The Internet giant has announced a $5 billion investment in a mid-Atlantic offshore wind “grid.”

Remember the Google homepage that featured their logo as interactive bouncy balls? Well you can create your own with your own message on this website, which utilizes code that was written by Rob Hawkes. [Hat tip: @tcarmody]

A bee beard for David Cameron, subway energy harvesting, and using search technology to identify endangered species… this week’s green tech finds.

The Wolverine solar cell: Researchers at MIT actually looked to plants, not the X-Men, when creating a solar cell that “heals” its own UV damage.
Tweet for the honey bees: British marketing firm LBi has created a “twittition” (Twitter petition) to support honey bee populations in the UK. Each tweet added to the petition adds a bee to a “bee beard” on a likeness of Prime Minister David Cameron (shown above).

Infrared photography, a green Motel 6, and solar in the South Pole… this week’s green tech finds.

Lower-carbon flying: Air travel is pretty energy and carbon-intensive, but GE’s trying to make flying a bit greener with “software that will help pilots choose the most environmentally efficient flight trajectories taking into account conditions on four dimensions – latitude, longitude, altitude and time.”
California’s the green energy leader… right? Maybe now, but according to Alexis Madrigal at The Atlantic, Alaska and Hawaii may have some of the most innovative approaches out there for moving to low-carbon energy sources.

In celebration of the 30th anniversary of the classic arcade video game Pac-Man, Google has a surprise on their main homepage. This is currently dominating Twitter’s top trending list. Without spoiling too much, go to www.google.com and wait a few seconds and let the logo fully load. You’ll get a playable surprise that “packs” quite…

Wanting a change to a creative advertising firm, which is often a highly competitive process, 28-year-old copywriter Alec Brownstein showed social media and marketing “experts” how to really leverage the power of the Internet along with some good old fashion psychology. While researching his favorite creative directors on Google, Brownstein noticed that there was no sponsored ad links (which appear at the top of the search results) attached to their names. If these directors were like the rest of us narcissists, he assumed they Googled themselves.

While more American cities are including bicycling in transportation planning, and even shooting for status as “bicycle friendly communities,” it can still be tough to get around on a bike. Today, during the opening sessions of the National Bike Summit 2010 in Washington, D.C., Google will be announcing its contribution to making biking easier: a bicycling directions option in Google Maps.

The Google Suggests feature is usually spot on, but sometimes it spits something at you that just doesn’t make much sense. The technology takes other people’s searches, caches them, and then predicts what you’re typing in the search box. The Huffington Post has asked readers to grab an image of the most inappropriate things Google…

Cars, fuels, and internet-based power management for your home: our green tech finds for the week…

Beyond carbon emissions: Clean Production Action and ChemSec have released a new report focused on “the advances that seven electronics companies have made when it comes to eliminating hazardous materials from their products.” (via ZDNet GreenTech Patures)
It’s an honor just to be nominated: The LA Auto Show has announced the finalists for its Green Car of the Year Award, which will be presented at the show in December.

When two crooks in the Dutch town of Groningen decided to separate a teenager from his bicycle last September, they had the misfortune to do it when a Google Street View car was passing by. The Sydney Morning Herald has a great slide show of the moments before the theft. The images allowed the police…